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PJV#34 April / May 2008
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-- Jamison Foser
"It's never the question that's the problem, Matt, it's the answer." -- NBC's Tim Russert "It's 'never the question that's the problem'? Really? Spoken like the guy who gets to ask the questions." --Columbia Journalism Review's Liz Cox Barrett
"It's never the question that's the problem, Matt, it's the answer." -- NBC's Tim Russert
"It's 'never the question that's the problem'? Really? Spoken like the guy who gets to ask the questions." --Columbia Journalism Review's Liz Cox Barrett
MSNBC recently began running commercials touting its coverage of "Decision 2008." One begins with on-screen text asking, "Why do people care about politics?" Viewers then hear Tim Russert explain: "It's about the war. Our sons and daughters. It's about the economy. Our jobs. It's about education. Our schools. It's about health care. Our families' well-being. It's about everything that matters." The ad ends with the on-screen declaration: "That's why you care. That's why we cover it."
The serious and high-minded approach to political coverage Russert brags about would be a welcome change from the political coverage for which Russert is responsible.
During this week's Democratic presidential debate, Russert didn't ask a single question about global warming, continuing his longstanding habit of all but ignoring the topic. He didn't ask a single question about the mortgage crisis. (As one Cleveland resident noted, "We've got the mortgage industry's toxic waste scattered all over this city, but Mr. Blue-Collar-Buffalo-and-Cleveland-Marshall-Guy Russert couldn't be bothered with a question about it.") He didn't ask a single question about executive power, the Constitution, torture, wiretapping, or other civil-liberties concerns. But that shouldn't come as a surprise; of all the questions he has asked while moderating presidential debates during this campaign, only one has dealt with any of those topics.
He has, however, asked Dennis Kucinich what he felt compelled to insist was a "serious question"-- whether Kucinich has seen a UFO. And he has asked about John Edwards' expensive haircut.
Funny, Russert doesn't mention UFOs or haircuts in that MSNBC promo.
Russert's performance as a moderator of this week's debate has drawn widespread criticism. Most appalling was his bizarre fixation on Louis Farrakhan.
Russert asked Barack Obama about Louis Farrakhan's praise for the Illinois senator. Obama, who had previously denounced Farrakhan, did so again. Then Russert asked about Farrakhan again. So Obama reiterated his denunciation. Then Russert, (who, I can only assume, was not bothering to listen to Obama's responses) asked about Farrakhan again. So Obama again reiterated his denunciation. Russert, plowing ahead, asked yet another question about Farrakhan, prompting Obama to answer yet again.
Josh Marshall summed up Russert's behavior nicely: "It was a nationwide, televised, MSM version of one of those noxious Obama smear emails."
This wasn't the first time Russert made the odd decision to ask about controversial comments.
This wasn't the first time Russert made the odd decision to ask Obama about controversial comments made by a famous African-American. During a 2006 interview, Russert asked Obama about controversial comments Harry Belafonte made the day before. But Belafonte, as Jane Hamsher noted at the time, had made similar comments two weeks before, and Russert had never asked any guest about them. Russert gave no indication of why Obama was uniquely qualified or required to comment on Belafonte's comments. (The only other time Russert has ever asked anyone about any comments made by Harry Belafonte, according to Nexis? 2003, when Russert asked then-Secretary of State Colin Powell about comments Belafonte made about U.S. actions toward Cuba.)
Given Russert's badgering of Obama about Farrakhan, you might be wondering how he handles endorsements by controversial figures who have a history of statements that are widely considered to be anti-Semitic ... when the endorser and the endorsed are both white Republicans.
Last November, Pat Robertson endorsed Rudy Giuliani during a joint event at the National Press Club where Giuliani praised Robertson as "a person of great, well-deserved reputation." Robertson has endorsed Jerry Falwell's claims that 9-11 was the fault of "abortionists," feminists, and the ACLU. He has suggested that the annual Gay Days event at Disney World would result in "the destruction of your nation. It'll bring about terrorist bombs, it'll bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor." He has linked Hurricane Katrina to legalized abortion. He has said "Jewish people" are "very thrifty" and "very wise in finance."
Robertson wrote a bizarre conspiracy theory book called New World Order that, Anthony Lewis noted, "relied [so] heavily on a British anti-Semitic writer of the 1920's, Nesta H. Webster ... one sometimes thinks of plagiarism." Lewis concluded of Robertson: "Perhaps Pat Robertson in his heart is not an anti-Semite. He just thinks a satanic conspiracy led by Jews has threatened the world for centuries. The best you can make of such a defense is that he is a plain, ordinary crackpot."
That's who Pat Robertson is; that's who Rudy Giuliani praised as "a person of great, well-deserved reputation." Now: How did Tim Russert react to Giuliani's enthusiastic acceptance of Robertson's endorsement? On Today on November 8, 2007, Russert said it would be "helpful" to Giuliani. In early December, Russert hosted Giuliani on Meet the Press. Russert didn't ask Giuliani a single question about Robertson. On January 24, Russert moderated a GOP debate. Russert didn't ask a single question about Robertson -- even though the debate took place in Florida, which was central to Giuliani's campaign "strategy" and which is home to a large number of Jewish voters who might not look kindly on Robertson's theories about a "satanic conspiracy led by Jews."
So: During this week's Democratic debate, Russert grilled Barack Obama about Louis Farrakhan, who Obama had repeatedly denounced prior to the debate, whose praise Obama did not accept, and who Obama reiterated his denunciation of multiple times during the debate.
Yet Russert never once asked Rudy Giuliani about his enthusiastic acceptance of Pat Robertson's endorsement or about his praise for Robertson. Not one question. He never said on NBC or MSNBC a single word about Robertson's history of inflammatory comments causing problems for Giuliani.
The double standard couldn't be clearer.
The double standard couldn't be clearer. The only question is, what it is about Barack Obama and Rudy Giuliani that makes Tim Russert treat them so differently? Why does Tim Russert think Barack Obama and Colin Powell are uniquely required and qualified to talk about Harry Belafonte? Why does Tim Russert think Barack Obama has to explain praise from Louis Farrakhan that he did not accept, but Rudy Giuliani doesn't have to explain an endorsement from Pat Robertson that he did accept?
Glenn Greenwald has more.
Given the intensity with which Russert questioned Obama about Louis Farrakhan -- a person whom Obama has nothing to do with -- two of Russert's own associations may be of interest:
At the beginning of Russert's June 2004 appearance on Rush Limbaugh's radio show, Limbaugh noted: "We don't have guests on this program, but we made an exception here for our friend Tim Russert of NBC News." Russert replied, "It's an honor to be here, Rush. Thank you very much. " Later, the two reminisced about sharing a steak dinner. Although the appearance came just weeks after Limbaugh's comparison of the torture at Abu Ghraib to a fraternity prank, Russert politely chose not to ask his host about the comments, or about any of Limbaugh's countless inflammatory statements about women and minorities.
Russert was a frequent guest on Don Imus' radio show and appeared just two days after Imus' comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team that ultimately led to his firing. Russert didn't say anything to Imus about the comments, nor did he comment on the Imus controversy in any other forum. Phil Noble noted in the Columbia Journalism Review in 2000 that at least one of Russert's appearances on Imus' radio show featured the two men engaging in what Noble described as "kidding" about homosexuality. Noting Imus' lengthy history of anti-gay rhetoric, Noble concluded: "Russert's kidding was the equivalent of sharing a watermelon joke with David Duke."
Back to this week's debate. Russert asked Obama a question about "keeping your word." When Russert sets up a question by announcing that it is about the candidate's character, there's a pretty good chance that he is about to reveal something about his own. (Last fall, Russert began a question to Hillary Clinton by announcing that the question "goes to the issue of credibility." He was right; the question went to his credibility: Everything he said after that was false. More on that below.) In this case, Russert asked about Obama's position on accepting public financing in for the general election if he is the Democratic nominee:
RUSSERT: Senator Obama, let me ask you about motivating, inspiring, keeping your word. Nothing more important. Last year you said if you were the nominee you would opt for public financing in the general election of the campaign; try to get some of the money out. You checked "Yes" on a questionnaire. And now Senator McCain has said, calling your bluff, let's do it. You seem to be waffling, saying, well, if we can work on an arrangement here. Why won't you keep your word in writing that you made to abide by public financing of the fall election?
This is horribly misleading. In fact, in response to the questionnaire Russert referred to, Obama wrote: "Yes. ... If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election."
So when Obama now says, as Russert puts it, "if we can work on an arrangement," that isn't "waffling," that is entirely consistent with his response to the questionnaire. Russert mischaracterized Obama's response to the questionnaire in order to accuse him of "waffling" and not "keep[ing] your word."
In response, Obama correctly noted that what he had previously said was that if he is the nominee, he will "sit down with John McCain" to pursue an agreement. Russert then followed up: "So you may opt out of public financing. You may break your word." But as Obama had just explained (and as his answer to the very questionnaire Russert cited confirms) the "word" Obama had given was that he would pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee -- exactly the position he holds now. Russert was dishonest in saying that Obama would be breaking his word if he opts out of public financing.
This performance wasn't as bad as that during last year's debate in Philadelphia.
As bad as his performance this week was, it wasn't as bad as his handling of last fall's Democratic debate in Philadelphia. That may have been the all-time worst performance by a debate moderator. To cite just two examples: Annenberg's FactCheck.org agreed that Russert's question about the Clinton archives was "breathtakingly misleading." Another question misrepresented previous questions Hillary Clinton had been asked (including one of Russert's own questions), misrepresented her answers, quoted her saying things she did not say, then concluded by suggesting that Clinton is a liar. Somebody was lying, all right, but it wasn't Hillary Clinton. I explained Russert's stunningly bad performance in greater detail at the time.
It takes a special kind of dishonesty to falsely describe someone's previous comments in order to accuse them of lying and breaking their word. There should be a word for that kind of behavior. In light of Russert's question to Clinton last fall and to Obama this week, perhaps it should be called "pulling a Russert."
After Russert was blasted by FactCheck.org for a "breathtakingly misleading" question to Clinton about the archives, you'd think he would be extra careful to get it right next time, wouldn't you? In this week's debate, Russert again asked Clinton about the archives – and Russert again got the facts wrong. "
Russert's mishandling of the influence that comes with his lofty perch atop the political media food chain is by no means limited to his conduct during presidential debates.
Last year, Russert was interviewed for a Bill Moyers report about how the Bush administration "misled the country" into the Iraq war with the help of a "compliant press ... [that] pass[ed] on their propaganda as news and cheer[ed] them on." During the interview, Russert famously complained that, during the run-up to the war, nobody called him to tell him they had concerns about the administration's case for war: "My concern was, is that there were concerns expressed by other government officials. And to this day, I wish my phone had rung, or I had access to them."
Though the image of one of the nation's most influential reporters staring at the phone, waiting for it to ring rather than actively seeking out the news might strike you as appallingly poor journalism, it isn't the most self-damning thing Russert said during the interview.
When Moyers asked him about the three networks' reliance on the Bush administration for their Iraq stories, Russert responded: "It's important that you have an opposition party. That's our system of government" -- suggesting that the reason the media relied on the Bush administration for Iraq reporting was the lack of an opposition party. The notion that the media shouldn't challenge the government unless the political party out of power does so first is self-evidently wrong. But Russert was also wrong about the lack of an opposition party, as I explained last year:
There was an "opposition party" during the run-up to the Iraq war. The majority of congressional Democrats opposed invading Iraq and voted against the law authorizing the use of force. Among the Democrats who voted against the authorization were some of the party's most prominent and powerful members, including Sens. Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, and Dick Durbin, and Reps. John Conyers, Nancy Pelosi and Charlie Rangel. Given that the majority of congressional Democrats voted against the authorization, including such household names as Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer, how could Tim Russert suggest there was no "opposition party" during the Iraq debate? Maybe because there was scant evidence of an opposition party on Russert's Meet the Press during the run-up to the Iraq war. On his personal blog earlier this year, Media Matters for America Senior Fellow Duncan Black examined five months of Meet the Press guest lists, starting on the day Congress authorized the use of force against Iraq to the day coalition forces actually invaded. Of the appearances by Democrats that involved a discussion of Iraq, eight appearances were by Democrats who voted for the authorization, and only three were by Democrats who voted against it. Remember, a majority of Democrats voted against the authorization; but on Russert's Meet the Press, there were nearly three times as many Democratic supporters of the authorization as opponents. Is it any wonder that Russert said there wasn't an "opposition party" during the Iraq debate?
There was an "opposition party" during the run-up to the Iraq war. The majority of congressional Democrats opposed invading Iraq and voted against the law authorizing the use of force. Among the Democrats who voted against the authorization were some of the party's most prominent and powerful members, including Sens. Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, and Dick Durbin, and Reps. John Conyers, Nancy Pelosi and Charlie Rangel.
Given that the majority of congressional Democrats voted against the authorization, including such household names as Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer, how could Tim Russert suggest there was no "opposition party" during the Iraq debate?
Maybe because there was scant evidence of an opposition party on Russert's Meet the Press during the run-up to the Iraq war. On his personal blog earlier this year, Media Matters for America Senior Fellow Duncan Black examined five months of Meet the Press guest lists, starting on the day Congress authorized the use of force against Iraq to the day coalition forces actually invaded. Of the appearances by Democrats that involved a discussion of Iraq, eight appearances were by Democrats who voted for the authorization, and only three were by Democrats who voted against it.
Remember, a majority of Democrats voted against the authorization; but on Russert's Meet the Press, there were nearly three times as many Democratic supporters of the authorization as opponents.
Is it any wonder that Russert said there wasn't an "opposition party" during the Iraq debate?
Still no room for the "opposition party. "
In November 2006, Russert demonstrated that he still didn't have room for the "opposition party" on his television show: The first broadcast of Meet the Press after Democrats won control of both houses of Congress, due in large part to their opposition to the Iraq war, featured two guests: John McCain and Joe Lieberman. Neither was elected as a Democrat. Both are among the staunchest supporters of the Iraq war.
Over the years, Russert has regularly smeared Democrats and progressives over issues large and small:
Last year, John McCain launched a petty attack on Barack Obama over an Obama press release that spelled "flack jacket" with a "c" in the word "flack." You might think that a United States senator treating a debate over war as though it was a spelling bee would be mocked by the media for trivializing questions of life and death. Not when the senator is John McCain; not when the media figure is Tim Russert.
Here is how Russert reported the flap: "Senator Obama talked about Senator McCain going to an Iraqi marketplace warring a flak jacket and surrounded and protected by American troops, but misspelled the word flak. And Senator McCain seized on that, suggesting that Senator Obama doesn't have the necessary experience in military and security affairs."
Other than the inanity of repeating McCain's attempt to correct Obama's spelling, Russert made another mistake: He didn't bother to check to see if McCain was right. In fact, Webster's, NBC congressional correspondent Mike Viqueira, and several U.S. military websites all agree that "flack" is an acceptable spelling of the word. So Russert's repetition of McCain's attempt to spell-check Obama's press releases was not only inane, it was also fundamentally false.
During a January interview with Hillary Clinton, Russert aired a truncated quote by former President Bill Clinton to falsely suggest that Bill Clinton had been talking about Obama's presidential campaign when he said, "This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen." In fact, Bill Clinton's "fairy tale" comment had been about Obama's record of opposition to the Iraq war, not about his bid for the presidency. Before airing a clip of Bill Clinton's remarks, Russert told viewers: "This is exactly what President Clinton said in Dartmouth. Here is the tape." But the clip showed Clinton saying only 15 words, and omitted the sentences immediately prior, which make clear that Clinton was talking about Obama's position on Iraq. Russert's use of the video clip was beyond misleading and well into dishonest -- the whole dispute was about the context of the "fairy tale"; the transcript shows Russert was clearly wrong, and he played a video clip that omitted any of that context and acted as though it proved he was correct.
Russert blamed Bill Clinton for the fact that North Korea had purportedly expanded its nuclear weapons program from having the ability to build two nuclear devices in 1993 to 13 in 2006: "When President Clinton said that, the North Koreans probably had the potential to build two nuclear devices. It's now up to 13. And if nothing is done, when George Bush leaves office, it could reach 17. It seems as though the United States talks tough with North Korea, but allows the program to go forward." Russert omitted the rather important detail that, as Media Mattersnoted, "North Korea did not produce any plutonium, nor build or test any nuclear bombs, during Clinton's eight years in office."
Five months after Democrats won control of both houses of Congress in a campaign in which the Iraq war was a central issue, Russert announced that "Democrats have always had a difficulty being competitive with the Republicans in the public voters' mind on national security and foreign policy issues." Not only was Russert's claim contradicted by the results of the most recent elections, it was contradicted by contemporaneous polling.
In June 2006, Russert asked a guest if same-sex marriage was an issue "that the Republicans used successfully to demonstrate that the Democrats were out of sync on cultural -- and values." But, as Media Mattersnoted, polling leading up to the 2004 election "found that the public was split equally on which party better represented their values," and that "[m]ore recent polling indicates that more people think Democrats better represent their values than do Republicans."
Immediately following the January 15, 2008, Democratic presidential debate he moderated, Russert misrepresented statements by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards in order to suggest that their positions had shifted since a September 2007 debate Russert moderated. (Russert, in other words, "pulled a Russert.")
In October 2006, Russert falsely claimed that "one-third of [convicted lobbyist Jack] Abramoff's money went to Democrats." In fact, Abramoff, a powerful Republican activist, never gave a dime to any Democrat. This is not an obscure fact; the false GOP talking point that Abramoff had contributed to Democrats had been debunked long (and often) before Russert made the claim. Earlier in the year, Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell faced a barrage of public criticism for repeating the false claim.
In November 2006, Russert suggested that Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (NV) opposed lobbying reform and the creation of the Office of Public Integrity. In fact, Reid had introduced lobbying-reform legislation calling for the creation of that office.
Speaking about Hillary Clinton earlier this year, Russert suggested that there is irony in a "self-avowed feminist" having shown "some emotion," as though feminists are the dour, humorless beings Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson think they are. At least Russert stopped short of using the term "feminazis."
In February 2007, Russert said: "My ear heard something that I had not heard from Democratic candidates in some time. Up front, Senator Obama began his speech with references to his faith, and then came back to that same issue in the speech. ... What's that about?" This is abject nonsense. It is a Republican lie to say that Democrats do not discuss their faith.
Just the week before -- seven short days -- Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards had talked about his religious upbringing. Where? In an interview on Meet the Press. Tim Russert's Meet the Press. How did the topic come up? Russert read Edwards a quote of Edwards saying, "I was raised in the Southern Baptist church and so I have a belief system that arises from that. It's part of who I am. I can't make it disappear." Edwards responded in part: "I grew up in the Southern Baptist church, I was baptized in the Southern Baptist church, my dad was a deacon. In fact, I was there just a couple weeks ago to see my father get an award. It's, it's just part of who I am."
So: On February 4, 2007, Tim Russert read John Edwards a quote of Edwards talking about his faith. Tim Russert then (presumably) listened as Edwards spoke of his faith, of having been baptized, of his father being a deacon. Seven short days later, Tim Russert told America that it had been "some time" since he last heard a Democratic candidate talk about faith.
Other examples of Democrats discussing their faith abound: Hillary Clinton. Bill Clinton. John Kerry (including in his speech accepting the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, which, presumably, Russert listened to at some point). Name a significant Democrat; it's a near certainty he or she has discussed his or her faith. It is simply false to suggest otherwise, as Russert did. Russert wasn't telling the truth; he was peddling a right-wing smear of Democrats.
In 2006, as Democrats were criticizing the Bush administration's decision to allow a company owned by the government of Dubai to run terminals at six U.S. ports, Russert suggestedthat Democrats were criticizing the deal in order to exploit it for political gain. "Here's the situation," Russert told viewers. "Democrats believe they can look tough on national security." Russert made no mention of the other possibility: that Democrats were talking about port security because they had been talking about port security for years.
The most prominent Democrats in the country -- Bill and Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and John Edwards among them -- had been discussing port security for years. They had been doing so in the most high-profile ways available to them: in speeches at the 2004 Democratic convention, during presidential debates. Even on Tim Russert's Meet the Press, where, presumably, Russert was listening to them.
Yet, in 2006, Russert suggested Democrats had just discovered and were cynically exploiting the issue. (A few weeks later, Democratic Sen. Joe Biden appeared on Meet the Press and told Russert: "I heard you on another show with [Today host] Katie Couric, Tim, saying something, in effect that the Congress hadn't done much either. Back in 2001, we introduced legislation for port security and rail security; 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005. It's been repeatedly spurned by the administration.")
Last year, during congressional debate over Iraq, Russert said that "the Democratic leadership realizes to vote against funding for the troops would be seen in a general election as not supporting the troops." Russert said nothing similar about Republicans who had voted against a previous version of the bill. To Tim Russert, Democrats who vote against a war-spending bill are voting "against funding for the troops" and will be seen as "not supporting the troops." But when Republicans vote against a war spending bill ... no problem.
Russert is also a serial misinformer about Social Security, frequently parroting bogus talking points produced by conservatives who want to privatize the program:
In questioning guests about Social Security, Russert uses a pro-privatization talking point about the declining ratio of workers per retiree to join the privatizers in suggesting that the system is in crisis: "When Social Security was created there were ... 42 workers for every retiree. There are now going to be, soon, two workers per retiree."
But economists Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot explained in their book Social Security: The Phony Crisis that this statistic is grossly misleading: "[T]he decline in this ratio has actually been considerably steeper in the past. ... These figures also neglect to take into account the reduced costs faced by the working population from having a smaller proportion of children to support. A more accurate measure of the actual burden faced by the employed labor force would be the total dependency ratio, which includes both retirees and children relative to the number of workers."
In using the alarmist pro-privatization rhetoric, Russert neglected to mention that the decline in the worker-to-retiree ratio has been steeper in the past. Nor does he mention that the total dependency ratio is, and is projected to remain, considerably lower than it was in the past.
Contrary to his carefully cultivated reputation as a tough interviewer who won't let guests get away with anything, Russert allows advocates of Social Security privatization to spin and mislead with impunity.
Russert employs crisis rhetoric favored by the privatization lobby and frowned upon by those who prefer to discuss Social Security accurately. He does so in part by trumpeting a decade-old quotation of Bill Clinton talking about the Social Security trust fund (and by attempting to use the quotation as a gotcha when interviewing Democrats). Clinton's comments were based on projections that were accurate at the time, but more recent projections show the trust fund to be in much better shape. Russert's use of Clinton's 1998 comments based on 1998 projections to argue that Social Security is in crisis now is like a child going to her parents in the dead of winter and citing a weather report from the previous July to argue that she should be able to wear shorts to school.
Along with his carefully cultivated image as a blue-collar son of South Buffalo, the thing everybody knows about Tim Russert is what a tough questioner he is. Like his regular-guy shtick, everybody knows this in large part because Russert himself keeps telling us it's true. He told Time magazine, for example, "I just don't let any kind of personal feelings interfere with my professional job, with my professional mission of trying to elicit information and ask questions. I believe very deeply, particularly about someone running for president, that if you can't answer tough questions then you can't make tough decisions. And so I apply that standard to all candidates from all parties."
In a piece headlined "How to beat Tim Russert," Slate.com's Jack Shafer wrote, "Plotting his interviews out like chess matches, he deploys aggressive openings, subtle feints, artfully constructed traps, and lightning offenses to crack the politicians' phony veneer and reveal the genuine veneer beneath. ... If you've switched your position on anything, or if your views on, say, the balanced budget clash with your advocacy of new tax cuts, expect Russert to grill you."
But this popular (and Russert-approved) view of Russert isn't quite right. There are a variety of ways you can avoid such tough questioning.
You could, for example, advocate Social Security privatization. If you do that, you can not only use a variety of phony arguments and bogus claims to buttress your position, you can do so with the confidence that if you need a moment to catch your breath, Russert himself will fill in for you.
Or you could be a Republican senator and presidential candidate talking about the decision to go to war in Iraq. Important Safety Tip: Do not skip the part about being a Republican.
In the first few months of 2007, Russert interviewed John McCain, John Edwards, and Joe Biden. All were running for president. All had been in the Senate for the 2002 vote authorizing the use of force in Iraq. Russert asked all of them about the decision to go to war. Russert asked Biden and Edwards why they voted to authorize the use of force despite the "caveats" in the 2002 NIE that cast doubt on the notion that Iraq was a threat to the U.S. But when Russert interviewed McCain a few weeks after interviewing Biden, he let McCain assert that the invasion of Iraq "was certainly justified" because "[e]very intelligence agency in the world, not just U.S., believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction."
Oddly, Russert -- the notoriously tough questioner who won't let anyone get away with anything and who brags he applies the same "standard to all candidates from all parties" -- didn't challenge McCain about the doubts expressed by American intelligence agencies in the NIE. (A year earlier, McCain had claimed on Meet the Press that "every intelligence agency in the world believed that he [Hussein] had weapons of mass destruction." Russert didn't challenge McCain that time, either. He does keep asking Democrats about the NIE, though.)
Media Matters has documented many other examples of Russert lobbing softballs to conservatives and letting them get away with misleading spin and false claims:
Russert allowed former Reagan adviser Ken Adelman to claim that "no one knew" that intelligence indicating Iraq had WMD "wasn't true." In fact, many, people had challenged the accuracy of that intelligence. The "no one knew" claim has long been the GOP's defense against criticisms of its decision to go to war, but Russert was either unprepared to challenge it or uninterested in doing so (just as he would later give McCain a pass on the same.)
On the May 20, 2007, edition of Meet the Press, guest Newt Gingrich asserted that an alleged plot to carry out an armed attack on Fort Dix was evidence that terrorists "don't plan to stop in Baghdad. They are coming here as soon as they can get here." This is a common right-wing talking point, but it has been repeatedly disputed by experts. In the weeks prior to Gingrich's appearance, The Washington Post, McClatchy, and NPR had all run reports that included intelligence officials and other experts disputing the claim. NPR cited, among others, retired Army Lt. Col. James Carafano, a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. According to NPR, "calls asserting that terrorists will follow U.S. troops home naive and poor rhetoric." The NPR report also featured a clip of Carafano saying, "There's no national security analyst that's really credible who thinks that people are going to come from Iraq and attack the United States -- that that's a credible scenario." But rather than challenging Gingrich's claim, Russert turned to his Democratic guest and instructed him to respond to Gingrich's far-fetched assertions.
In early 2006, Russert hosted Gen. Peter Pace, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and failed to challenge a series of dubious assertions Pace made in support of his claim that the Iraq war was "going very, very well."
In 2004, Russert asked Jerry Falwell about his comments that abortion rights advocates, feminists, and homosexuals, among others, were responsible for the September 11 terrorist attacks. Falwell falsely claimed that he "likewise" held responsible "a sleeping church, a lethargic church." Falwell wasn't telling the truth, but Russert let him get away with it. Russert also asked Falwell about a study that showed that "[t]he states with the highest level [of divorce] are the so-called Bible Belt, in the South." In response, Falwell asserted that "born-again, Bible-believing Christians who take the Bible as the word of God," the divorce rate is lower. That wasn't true, either -- but again, Russert failed to challenge Falwell. Keep in mind: Russert brought both of these topics up. He presumably had Falwell's 9-11 quote handy; after all, he read it to Falwell. But when Falwell falsely described his comments, Russert let him get away with it.
Interviewing Sens. John Warner, a Republican, and Joe Biden, a Democrat, Russert asked Warner about whether the Bush administration distorted or withheld evidence that the aluminum tubes sought by Saddam Hussein didn't have anything to do with WMD. When Warner dodged the question, not saying anything about the aluminum tubes but instead simply asserting that Bush "would not intentionally take any facts and try and mislead the American public," Russert did not press Warner either on that dubious assertion or on his failure to answer the question. Instead, he turned to Biden and grilled him on his vote to authorize the use of force, asking Biden about the 2002 NIE that contained caveats about the WMD intelligence. Russert didn't ask Warner why he voted to authorize force despite the NIE caveats.
Russert allowed Richard Perle to suggest that former Vice President Al Gore supported the invasion of Iraq in a 2002 speech. In fact, during that speech Gore opposed the invasion.
Russert repeatedly failed to challenge false and dubious claims by Vice President Cheney during a September 2006 interview.
In 2005, amid speculation that the investigation into the Bush administration's outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame would yield indictments on perjury and obstruction of justice charges, conservatives were frantically trying to downplay the seriousness of those charges. Appearing on Meet the Press, Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison did so by claiming "there were charges against former President Bill Clinton besides perjury and obstruction of justice" during his 1999 Senate trial on impeachment charges. In fact, there were not, as Russert should have known; the impeachment trial was a fairly high-profile event. Nevertheless, Russert let Hutchison's false claim go uncorrected.
In 2005, Russert hosted RNC chair Ken Mehlman, who claimed that the 9-11 Commission had "totally discredited" the notion that the Bush administration manipulated prewar intelligence. Given that the 9-11 Commission didn't even address the administration's use of prewar intelligence, this was a pretty big falsehood. But Russert let Mehlman get away with it.
In early 2007, Russert let John McCain make a series of wild claims without challenging them. McCain claimed Joe Lieberman's re-election in Connecticut was evidence that it was not "clear-cut" that the public opposed the Iraq war. Russert failed to note that exit polls showed that Lieberman was re-elected in spite of his support for the war, not because of it. Nor did Russert note that Lieberman spent the bulk of the campaign frantically pretending to be a war critic and trying to convince voters that he intended to end the war and bring the troops home.
McCain also claimed that at the time of the first Gulf War, "only 15 percent of the American people thought we ought to go to Kuwait and get rid of Saddam Hussein there." In fact, a Gallup poll taken the day before the launch of Operation Desert Storm found 79 percent of Americans supported going to war in the Gulf. McCain could hardly have been more wrong, yet Russert didn't correct the glaring falsehood.
Interviewing Republican California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Russert asked such hard-hitting questions as whether or not Schwarzenegger agreed with the assessment that he had a "mastery of the state's rising independent center"; whether Schwarzenegger thought a description of him as a "moderate" was "fair," the open-ended "What is an Arnold Republican?" and, best of all: "You're a Republican winning in California, a Blue State, in a Democratic year. People would have you on the short list for the Republican nomination in 2008. But they can't for one reason: You were not born in the United States. Is that fair?" Russert had a follow-up to that one: "You've been a citizen for 23 years, shouldn't you have an opportunity to run for president?" In between tossing Schwarzenegger softballs, Russert let him get away with whoppers like his claim that "we have the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years or so." That was true -- if by "30 years or so" Schwarzenegger meant "six years."
Russert doesn't just toss softballs to conservatives when he interviews them. He carries their water in other ways, too.
As Media Matters' Eric Boehlert has explained, during the 2004 election, Russert apparently knew that then-Cheney aide Scooter Libby had given false testimony to the special counsel investigating the Bush administration's outing of Valerie Plame -- but Russert kept this information secret.
President Bush and his press secretary indicated during the Plame leak investigation that anyone who had anything to do with the leak would be fired. When it was clear that Karl Rove had participated in the leak, Russert helped the Bush administration move the goalposts, describing Bush as having "said early on in this [investigation] that if anyone broke the law, that he would deal with it." Since Rove was never convicted of anything, under this standard, Bush wouldn't have to fire him.
Russert adopted the GOP's inflammatory description of a Democratic Iraq proposal as "slow-bleed."
Russert falsely claimed there was "no evidence" that former head of the Iraqi National Congress Ahmed Chalabi "was associated with Curveball," a relative of a top Chalabi aide who became the most influential source for U.S. intelligence on Iraq's biological weapons program. In fact, independent reporting and the then-recently released Robb-Silberman report on intelligence regarding WMDs (to which Russert referred) indicated a clear connection between Chalabi and Curveball.
During the fight over President Bush's nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, Russert twice claimed that when former President Bill Clinton nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer to the Supreme Court, Senate Republicans voted for them despite ideological differences with the "two liberal jurists." Russert also claimed that Alito's judicial philosophy is "no more conservative than Ginsburg and Breyer's were liberal." Russert wasn't telling the truth. Ginsburg and Breyer were seen as moderate nominees, not liberal, and had in fact been recommended for nomination by Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah.
Immediately after the 2004 vice presidential debate between John Edwards and Dick Cheney, Russert repeated Cheney's claim during the debate that he had previously never met Edwards until moments before the debate started -- a claim Cheney made in order to suggest that Edwards didn't show up for work at the Senate. The next morning, Russert noted that in fact the two had met multiple times before, including one morning in 2001 when they were both on Meet the Press and, according to Russert, "they stopped and shook hands." Russert said that, during the debate, he "thought that John Edwards would call him on it right at that very moment." So -- according to his own statements -- Russert knew while watching the debate that Cheney had lied. Yet after the debate, he repeated Cheney's lie, without giving viewers any indication that it wasn't true.
Is it any wonder that Cheney's staff believes they can control the message on Meet the Press? The Washington Post's Dana Milbank reported during the Scooter Libby trial:
Memo to Tim Russert: Dick Cheney thinks he controls you.
This delicious morsel about the "Meet the Press" host and the vice president was part of the extensive dish Cathie Martin served up yesterday when the former Cheney communications director took the stand in the perjury trial of former Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Flashed on the courtroom computer screens were her notes from 2004 about how Cheney could respond to allegations that the Bush administration had played fast and loose with evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions. Option 1: "MTP-VP," she wrote, then listed the pros and cons of a vice presidential appearance on the Sunday show. Under "pro," she wrote: "control message."
"I suggested we put the vice president on 'Meet the Press,' which was a tactic we often used," Martin testified. "It's our best format."
If you still aren't persuaded that on Meet the Press, it is often the question -- and the questioner -- that is the problem, spend a few hours poking around Bob Somerby's Daily Howler archives. Be sure to seek out his analysis of Russert's interviews with Al Gore, Howard Dean, and George W. Bush
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There's few things more rewarding than being a dedicated (and bold) fan. I was first in line at the Neptune, and when I got in it wasn't a frantic race to the front, so I took a leisurely stroll up there, got to enjoy the empty venue to myself for a second before marking my territory front-center stage. I chatted a bit with the people around me so they'd hold my place.
I was at the merch booth srsly salivating over a colored vinyl copy of "Love at the Bottom of the Sea" and the last Holcombe Waller album I never got, when Holcombe just popped up out of nowhere and I was like, "um, hi?"
And I go into blubbering fangirl mode ("such a big fan"/"love your stuff"/"this song blew me away"/"you go on my mixtapes"/"loved ya from the beginning"/misc. squeeing)
He was like ORLY? when Boom! I whip out the press release full-length demo of his first album.
He was like, amazed: "Where did you get that?? I sold out of those a long time ago… I made this when I was 23! They're going for $50 on ebay now. Wow… you really weren't kidding!" He seemed really happy :)
I offered a sharpie and he joyfully signed it:
<3 June!
Thank you for making
my day! I still
love this album!!
H Waller <3
To top it off he said, "Did you get my last album?" I said "No, I—" but before I could finish he just gave me one (listening to Into The Dark Unknown now!!)
And then asked me for a request from the demo.
I swooned over a favorite, and his eyes lit up and he was like "yeah we can definitely do that, if I just go arrange…" and then he gave me a huge hug and scampered off.
He played an amazing set (with my song!) and finished with a cover of "Fast Car," forgetting some of the lyrics, and then laughing it off to his bandmate, "haha, I sound like Jeff Buckley now."
…and I got his setlist too. FANGIRL HEAVEN!
shadow martyr
risk of ch.
into the dark
—> need +16 min
(baby blue) [played "hands that bathe you", my request]
i can feel it
The Magnetic Fields:
Stephin is who he is, not one for stage banter or showmanship because the lyrics are enough to pack a hall for two nights. It was a redeeming show for me: I'd only seen them once before, Bumbershoot 2000, when I was standing in the back-corner of a packed opera house, just hearing the dots below.
Twelve years and 4 albums after 69 Love Songs I needed to catch up. The set opened cheerfully enough with "I Die" and was a good mix of material from the new album, 69 LS sing-along favorites, and oldie-classics from Charm of the Highway Strip, Holiday, and Distant Plastic Trees.
Claudia noted the theme of the tour was "marriage and death. Not necessarily in that order."
Always interesting and lovely to hear even his most electronic and synthesized pieces—like the new "Andrew in Drag"—arranged into a 5-piece band with Stephin on Melodica and the rest of the gang standing by in their usual positions (piano, guitar, cello, ukelele). They said their next video will be for the song "Quick."
I hope it comes out… quick! :) in the meantime, Imma scan the internets for photos of tonight's show and if I find some good ones (and a setlist) I'll share!

subset: commoncrawl


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John Arensmeyer, the founder of small business advocacy group Small Business Majority, recently suggested that small business owners accept President Obama's demand that marginal tax rates be raised on the top two percent of earners as part of any plan to avoid the fiscal cliff. He told the Washington Post, "There's no reason to not just let the tax cuts on the top two brackets expire."
For the head of a small business advocacy group seeking to build a positive relationship with the administration, this is a politically savvy position. Only about 3 percent of small business owners would face a tax increase under the President's proposal; and the President might be willing to support preserving the tax breaks small businesses favor if they went along with his plan. But as Columbia University economist Glenn Hubbard wrote in a recent Financial Times commentary, a better economic approach would be to cap tax deductions.
Higher marginal tax rates mean that people keep less of each additional dollar they earn, which lowers their willingness to work an extra hour or invest an extra dollar. For small business owners who run pass through entities (subchapter S corporations, partnerships, and sole proprietorships), higher marginal tax rates also discourage capital investment and hiring in their businesses. For everyone, higher marginal tax rates motivate people to find ways to avoid paying taxes, even if those solutions aren't economically productive. That's why the Congressional Budget Office estimates that allowing the Bush tax cuts on the top two percent of earners to expire would lower real GDP growth next year.
Tax deductions also distort incentives by encouraging people to spend money in ways that lower their taxes, rather than ways that don't, but are more productive. The mortgage interest deduction, for instance, leads people to borrow money to buy bigger houses than they need.
Collectively, we would be better off if the government raised additional revenue by cutting tax deductions rather than raising marginal tax rates.
During the campaign, Mitt Romney proposed a politically shrewd way to do this. Just cap tax deductions. Do that and you get fewer distortions without political battles over which special interests get to keep their cherished deductions.
The Tax Policy Center estimates that capping tax deductions at $50,000 per year would raise roughly the same amount of revenue as letting the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy expire, Greg IP of the Economist explains. Since rich people deduct more than than poor people, a $50,000 cap in tax deductions would hit mostly high income tax payers.
While capping deductions doesn't have the soak-the-rich appeal of raising the marginal tax rate, and requires President Obama to take a page from the Republican playbook, it allows him to achieve his goal of making high earners "pay a little bit more."
Republican leaders have signaled that they would go along. Speaker of the House John Boehner and former Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan both have said that they would accept higher tax revenues, but not higher tax rates. As Ryan told the Milwaukee Sentinel, "Our fear is that if you raise tax rates you hurt economic growth. You hurt small businesses. So through tax reform you can get higher revenues without damaging the economy."


text: Breakfast Piggy Pancakes I made piggy pancakes for the kids and they were a huge hit! I wasn't sure if they would be able to figure out what they were so I let them guess. They decided these were cow pancakes instead so who knows what animal your own kids might pick? I made a batch of this pancake batter. It is my absolute favorite because it doesn't require any fancy ingredients and can be made out of everything in your pantry. The pancakes remind me of the McDonald's pancakes and I absolutely could devour a few stacks of those in one sitting. To save a little bit more money, I make a batch of powdered milk to mix into the pancakes. It isn't a huge savings, but it saves me from making multiple trips for milk throughout the week. You will want to make one large pancake and two silver dollar sized pancakes. When you see the bubbles bubbling up on top, give them a flip and cook until they are cooked through. I used kitchen scissors and cut one of the small pancakes in half and slipped it under the large pancake, to make the ears. Plop a small pancake on top for the snout and use blueberries or chocolate chips for the eyes. For preschoolers, you could tie in any good barnyard book or my personal favorite…"If You Give a Pig a Pancake." Published August 19, 2008 by: Amy Allen Clark is the founder of MomAdvice.com. You can read all about her here.


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We provide guidance using our market research and expertise to significantly improve your marketing, sales and product efforts. We offer a portfolio of advisory, research, thought leadership and digital education services to help optimize market strategy, planning and execution.
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The new CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Leo Apotheker, has unveiled his vision of the future in the consumer and enterprise markets. His announcement carried some suspense after interviews in which he said "HP has lost its soul" and added that he will "get rid of cynics" inside HP who try to undercut his mission. Now Leo has defined what his company calls Everybody On, which is described as "seamless, secure, context-aware experiences for a connected world." He intends that HP will reposition itself in providing a new generation of cloud services to interconnect its software and technology assets. HP of course is no small technology provider, with over $125 billion in revenue and a predominantly legacy and acquired software business worth over $6 billion. I want to provide some analysis of HP's announcements in the context of what I see as the coming business technology innovations of this decade. My view overlaps with the HP vision. HP is expanding the territory of its business, focusing less on the enterprise software business of database, middleware and applications and more on the management and security of cloud services and software.
Cloud computing is where Leo's HP is articulating its mission of bringing together an interconnected market of consumers and the enterprise. HP plans to further the interconnectivity of its computers, servers and printers using the webOS technology it acquired from Palm. This approach is smarter than leaving it to Microsoft or any other provider for a mobile operating system. HP has been expanding its cloud computing efforts in an "open cloud marketplace" that will be accessible from its technologies whether printers and standard computers or new mobile devices including the HP TouchPad tablet and Palm Pre smartphone. The primitives of these services can be found on its latest generation of printers and accessed via the Internet; you also can access a range of services as I have done personally through my HP 8500, which is a pretty good piece of engineering.
HP's cloud marketplace will access services that HP has been arming itself to build from public, private and hybrid (combined) clouds and its own software, technology and services. HP will need to provide more software assets there to make it attractive for developers who want to build and deploy in its cloud services and marketplace. I expect this will require more acquisitions, as HP is not known for quick development cycles and timely updates of software to meet new markets; it shares these challenges with other very large peers like IBM, Oracle and Microsoft. The wrapper for its cloud computing efforts is where HP has some of its strongest assets, including management and security, and transformation services to migrate or adapt to new cloud-based software services. Another strength is its ability to manage these computing environments in a data center or grid. Also HP is coming to market with the HP CloudSystem, an appliance to build and manage software on a single platform. HP was quick to talk as well about its Cloud Maps to ease integration of software from Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, SAS and other vendors that operate on its servers and software. The Cloud Maps put a brand on what it has been doing for some time to help software operate on its servers, but now the management software is more tightly integrated with the computing and storage aspects of the appliance. HP also sees itself providing a cloud environment for personal and team computing; this could be promising if the service is as easy to use as what our firm has with Egnyte for cloud-based file sharing and servers for secure access to information along with systems backup.
On the mobility side, HP seriously intends to become a major player in the tablet and smartphone markets. Its life-saving acquisition of Palm in 2010 was widely questioned because, having led early on in the PDA market, Palm had struggled to insert itself into the new markets. But HP has been working hard to leverage these assets and their experience for a new generation of tablets called HP TouchPad and a smartphone called HP Pre3. HP has worked to make them secure and enterprise-ready on webOS but integrated into with Microsoft Exchange server and managed for both enterprise and consumer markets. It has done a great job with multitasking of applications, use of Adobe Flash and interconnectivity of the two smartphone and tablet technologies, which I would love to have with my Apple iPhone and iPad. But let's remember that practically speaking, neither the best technology nor ones that address the gaps of others are what make a market; that is driven by the marketing and ecosystem of applications and developers that already exist. In this case it also requires a consumer mindset, and this is a very difficult market to penetrate with the strengths of Apple, Android, RIM and even Microsoft. I think Leo will have to build a new consumer and marketing team that will approach its task completely differently than HP has done before. Just because you can sell printers and notebooks to consumers does not provide a free ride in the mobile space as Dell and even Microsoft have seen.
With analytics HP has had some of its bumpiest roads. The controversial demise of HP Neoview that I covered in December that has irked many at HP wrecked the company's reputation in the buyer community for data warehousing and analytics; many customers shipped the technology back and negotiated downward their consulting services bills. Part of the problem was that HP tried to make Neoview support very large volumes of data continuously and also provide privacy and security of the data, which in the end did not work in many customer configurations. According to my sources, Leo was unaware of the significant challenges and change of strategy that he inherited with Neoview, and the company finally announced the shut down of it on January 24. Since last September most of the talented people who knew the analytics and BI market have left the organization. This exodus was due to lack of leadership and commitment, and even Leo's arrival did not restore their confidence in management. Now HP has a new strategy with the acquisition of Vertica, a company we assessed previously. The sudden acquisition of Vertica was a bit of a surprise and appears to be a back-room deal involving HP board chairman Ray Lane, who as a partner at Kleiner Perkins invested in Vertica. This deal orchestrated by Leo and Ray seems to be a fast maneuver to find a new analytics strategy for HP without a significant investment or a major shift to its portfolio and leadership strategy, which are desperately needed. It was clear that Leo is not getting all the facts, as he boldly claimed that Vertica has "limitless scaling" and "extreme compression" capabilities to support big-data analytics and is representing it as the next generation of business intelligence. Just as it recklessly positioned HP Neoview as able to solve any data problem, HP again is making promises that its technology has not been proven able to keep, in this case to handle the size and depth of very-large-scale data challenges. Vertica is in the classes of columnar technology, which my colleague has explained. Vertica has good technology and some customer adoption, but like Neoview it will play best with specific applications and uses and not across the entire market; it has to be prepared carefully to load and query to work efficiently. If HP believes it can engineer it to be more, it should look back at its last five years of evolving HP Neoview. A bolder step into the analytics and data management markets would have looked like Teradata's acquisition of Aster Data that my colleague covered; something like that could have provided entry to the enterprise business markets. Or HP might have looked at the commercialization of the Hadoop open source technology for large-scale data through a company such as Cloudera. Of course this is not the only thing challenging HP – it will need integration and analytics tools to compete with IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and many others including Information Builders. HP sees Vertica as part of platform services in its overall software strategy, but Leo was showing it off in an appliance with what he called full-, half- and quarter-rack packaging. HP clearly is very early in understanding what it is buying with Vertica and not ready to position how it can be used; many organizations that bought and attempted to apply HP Neoview still have bad tastes in their mouths from wasting not only dollars but time, which is a more critical business asset, and are likely to be skeptical of the new approach.
The collaboration and social media aspects of the consumer and enterprise markets include not only the likes of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn but also Salesforce Chatter, SuccessFactors CubeTree, Saba SocialLive, Jive Software and many others. HP did not communicate anything substantive in this area. It instead has focused on the need to get content on devices and platforms through digitization from print. HP sees itself driving the workflow of creation, authentication, storage and accessibility of information in a collaborative environment. This could work if it can be accessible across the variety of business mobility technologies beyond HP's own and made part of the overall computing fabric.
HP has been evolving its work in information management toward what it calls information optimization, which is based on content and records more than data. This I think puts HP at a disadvantage to IBM, Oracle and SAP, especially to IBM's information governance focus. Despite this HP has begun to present a coherent set of methods and processes to manage the life cycle of information, which could help it play a more strategic role in enterprises. Using a partnering approach to database management systems (except for Vertica), HP will have to find a path for further expansion and interoperability. It also will need to find more progressive ways to access IT data and provide IT analytics that our research found to be great demand. Vendors such as Splunk, which I have assessed and Planview are addressing these issues. Splunk, for example, has been growing by making it simple to access, index, search and present IT data in meaningful metrics and information applications for IT and business.
In its professional services, HP has focused on multiyear IT outsourcing deals or providing private cloud environments for enterprises. The latter is a good place to look for the future as the demand by enterprises for most consulting services has not rebounded since the economic collapses over the last three years. This was also confirmed in our major new business analytics benchmark research which shows that external consulting resources (7%) and outsourced IT resources (3%) seldom have responsibility to design and deploy analytics.
This is not unexpected as enterprises and CIOs need to control their own destinies and have learned many lessons in recent years about why business units aren't pleased with their current computing environments. My colleague said it well recently in "With IT Departments, Companies Get What They Deserve" in which he outlines why CIOs and IT need to be more engaged in the success of business. In many cases that means making information ready to help business processes operate more efficiently and applying analytics for making decisions. HP is focusing its communications with CIOs mostly on the cloud and is preparing to meet business needs for cloud-based services. The issue here is that the lines of business adopting public cloud business applications want to onboard and use them in quick implementations that do not require the debate and delays in meeting corporate IT standards and governance. This attitude challenges IT to manage data in applications spread all over, which my colleague describes as clouds raining corporate data. HP does have software to help with information enablement across both enterprise and cloud, as do Informatica, Pervasive, Jitterbit and the new SnapLogic, and can offer consulting services here.
HP has software for application transformation, but it needs more than just application life cycle, virtualization, security and management to help enterprises adapt to cloud computing in a hybrid environment. HP is playing to its strength in management software but also will need to manage the valuable data underlying applications. Wisely, I think, Leo has made it clear that HP will not be acquiring a transactional application company (like SAP, his old company) to gain customers and maintenance dollars, instead focusing on the future computing environment; I believe this is the right approach if HP can fill its gaps.
HP does have a lot to offer in what it calls security intelligence, to help organizations manage incidents, vulnerability and policies to ensure they build a safe, risk-free environment. This will definitely be an opportunity for HP to further its differentiation as it is has assets and an approach superior to those from IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP.
In life-cycle support of its products, both the consumer and enterprise markets have expectations of timely migration that makes technology faster and easier to use. Except for its hardware businesses, HP historically has had slow product release cycles, which has deterred some business organizations from using its software. Of course there are challenges in the complexity of software, but IT's concern is simpler and faster iterations to its enterprise software. I am not convinced that HP yet understands this enough to actually change its culture and processes in this area.
Leo has been under some serious scrutiny lately with his promoting of a new generation of directors on the HP board. It's likely that significant change is required as the board hampered some of his predecessor's growth strategies in favor of cost-reduction efforts. It will require some new leadership there and below to deliver the sort of change that Leo has promised. In particular its software and technology products organizations need to work together like never before and digest new acquisitions without losing the talent that made them worth buying in the first place. Leo has set the bar pretty low for what the industry including Wall Street should expect to ensure he gets some time to make necessary changes. It should help that his predecessor squeezed out the obvious waste in duplication of effort and costs that were required to begin the change.
HP is embarked on a cultural and technological change that is overdue. Leo is going to push the organization to adapt and if necessary eliminate those who do not move fast enough to adjust to the new order. This is healthy but will have to be done while improving employee satisfaction to increase productivity and gain better throughput of its business processes. It won't be enough to craft a fancy new marketing message around cloud computing; it will take a truly transformative approach that can deliver value to business customers in the short term. HP can do this eventually, but the question is whether it can communicate the roadmap for getting with clarity and substance that will be more convincing than the messages from its other top competitors. For me, it is too early to say. I will revisit this situation in three to four months and see if anything has improved, so stay tuned!
Mark Smith – CEO & EVP Research
Mark Smith is the Partner, Head of Software Research at ISG and Ventana Research leading the global market agenda as a subject matter expert in digital business and enterprise software. Mark is a digital technology enthusiast using market research and insights to educate and inspire enterprises, software and service providers.
Ventana Research's Analyst Perspectives are fact-based analysis and guidance on business,
Each is prepared and reviewed in accordance with Ventana Research's strict standards for accuracy and objectivity and reviewed to ensure it delivers reliable and actionable insights. It is reviewed and edited by research management and is approved by the Chief Research Officer; no individual or organization outside of Ventana Research reviews any Analyst Perspective before it is published. If you have any issue with an Analyst Perspective, please email them to firstname.lastname@example.com


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Building A Disability-Inclusive Society In Asia And The Pacific – OpEd
By Noeleen Heyzer
The 2012 London Paralympics captivated the world's attention with the strength of the human spirit demonstrated by persons with disabilities. We were all moved by the determination and perseverance of the athletes to overcome the odds that defeat so many of us.
What we saw of the London Paralympics gives reason to pause and reflect on the everyday struggles of persons with disabilities. Here in Asia-Pacific, there are 650 million persons with disabilities. They account for 15 per cent of the population, but are mostly unseen, unheard and uncounted.
Evidence indicates that persons with disabilities are among the most marginalized in society. The most common reasons are a lack of education and limited employment opportunities.
Having a person with a disability in a household increases the incidence of household and individual income poverty. Likewise, household poverty is more likely to limit the access that persons with disabilities have to basic services, education and financial support.
Many lack access to the physical environment, public transportation, knowledge, information and communication, which is a precondition for persons with disabilities to fulfill their rights in an inclusive society.
All these factors together result in a greater likelihood of economic and social exclusion.
What other compelling reason makes it imperative for us to pay closer attention to disability?
Asia-Pacific is experiencing unprecedented population ageing. By 2050, in much of East Asia, one in three persons will be aged 60 and above. In other parts of Asia-Pacific, it will be one in four persons. That means that there will be significantly more older persons in our societies, and many of them are likely to have some form of disability. Indeed, it is projected that by 2050, 80 per cent of the population of persons with disabilities in some parts of Asia-Pacific will be older persons aged 60 and above.
That is why a month ago, Governments of Asia and the Pacific gathered at an ESCAP conference in Incheon, Republic of Korea, to tackle the existing barriers that prevent the growing number of persons with disabilities from participating in economic, social and political life.
The Governments launched a new Asian and Pacific Decade of Persons with Disabilities for the period 2013 to 2022. They also adopted a regional strategy to chart the course of the new Decade by adopting the world's first set of regionally-agreed disability-inclusive development goals. For the first time, the Asian and Pacific region will be able to track and measure progress in our efforts to improve the quality of life of persons with disabilities.
Referred to as the "Incheon Strategy to Make the Right Real for Persons with Disabilities in Asia and the Pacific", the Strategy contains specific time-bound goals and targets, among others, to reduce poverty among persons with disabilities, improve their access to the physical and ICT environments as well as education and employment opportunities.
Asia-Pacific is the region most adversely affected by disasters, and there is evidence that persons with disabilities are two to four times more likely to die than the general population when disasters occur. Thus Governments also stressed the need to ensure that disaster risk reduction and management incorporates disability perspectives.
Finally, if we are to be able to measure progress in building disability-inclusive societies, it will be necessary for countries to improve their collection of statistics on the population of persons with diverse disabilities and their socio-economic status. This would enable policymaking to be evidence-based to support the realization of the rights of persons with disabilities.
It is time to give thought to how we can reshape our societies – where we live, where we work and where we play – to enable all of us to enjoy the same freedom of movement and access to all aspects of life.
On the occasion of the 2012 International Day of Persons with Disabilities, let us each do our part to ensure that persons with disabilities get counted to count.
Dr. Noeleen Heyzer is Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of ESCAP.


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Biomedicine's democratic revolution
Collaborative approaches to research will unlock oceans of genetic data and allow us to discover how diseases really work in the body, argues Stephen H. Friend.
Very soon, it will be economically feasible to sequence human genomes and collect massive amounts of different types of health data as standard medical practice. Already, there are remarkable examples of how these new genetic data are changing our thinking about disease and diagnosis.
Consider the Beery twins, born in 1996 in San Diego, California. They suffered from chronic vomiting, seizures, and muscle weakness, sending them and their parents on an odyssey of medical examinations and tests. The first diagnosis was cerebral palsy. Then they received a diagnosis of dystonia, a rare neurological disorder. But treatments based on these diagnoses did not alleviate the children's symptoms.
Frustrated, their parents had the twins' genomes sequenced. The results revealed that the twins had been incompletely diagnosed. Their previously diagnosed dystonia was being caused by a genetic mutation that was interfering with the neurotransmitter serotonin. The twins' doctors found that the dystonia could be fully treated with a readily available serotonin replacement.
So why haven't success stories like that of the Beery twins, together with the internet's power and increasingly affordable collection of molecular data, led to the construction of a knowledge network of disease? Why aren't scientists and doctors turning in droves to data-intensive science in order to build better 'disease maps'?
Oceans of data
One possible answer is that there are still technical barriers that block the construction and use of such networks. With our ability to generate ever-rising oceans of molecular data — now approaching the zetabyte scale (that's a one followed by 21 zeros) — comes the challenge of storing and deciphering this information.
But scientists and software engineers regularly face such daunting challenges, and, with DNA serving as the reference language of modern biomedical research, the technical barriers to constructing disease networks will be short-lived.
Cultural barriers are the real stumbling block. As humans, we are highly evolved to adjust to our surroundings: we tend to adapt to a culture, well-conceived or not, and lose sight of its failings. But when we glimpse an alternative, our culture's inadequacies (and even insanities) are immediately apparent, which may prompt a cultural shift, collective action, and change. The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and, more recently, the Arab Spring are clear examples of this dynamic.
Similarly, the example of the Beery twins shows us that an alternative to symptom-based medicine can be realised: the advent of genomics technology can change not just what is known, but, more importantly, how we think of ourselves.
But, in order to build the disease networks of tomorrow, we will need to move beyond the current linear approaches to science and to how scientists work. We all like a good story that unfolds in a straightforward way, but the story of disease plays out across a poly-nodal information network, similar to what an air traffic controller might track in the skies above a major airport. Biomedical researchers' 'lock and key' and linear-pathway representations are incomplete, and should be supplemented with disease maps that can now be built using molecular data.
Collaboration and crowdsourcing
We must also build the infrastructure and cultivate the relationships needed to share disease maps with basic researchers, practising doctors, drug developers, and even the public at large. And that could prove to be even more difficult, because the current closed nature of the medical-information system and its self-directed incentive structure block such sharing.
Patents, trademarks, and competition for resources (people, money, and accolades) seal off information and prevent molecular data from being analysed and shared. Rewards in biomedical research go to 'solo workers', and do nothing to acknowledge the work that can be done only by multi-functional groups.
Despite these imposing obstacles to progress, there are reasons to believe that a cultural shift is afoot: researchers from geographically distant labs are forming non-traditional 'federations' to combine their data sets, work on them collaboratively, and post the results for other scientists to analyse.
Crowd-sourced competitions like DREAM Challenges and FoldIt show that important scientific findings can emerge from outside of universities and pharmaceutical companies. And public-private partnerships between drug developers, basic researchers, and patient groups that share information pre-competitively (that is, with no or limited patent filings) are an increasingly popular way to translate scientific findings into potentially meaningful clinical benefits.
But a few successful federations, competitions, and partnerships may not be enough to transform biomedical research. Disruptive change may be required, and here each of us can make a profound difference.
Patient groups are already organised; their members can report their symptoms online and self-enrol in clinical trials. We can already obtain portions of our own genetic information and use it to make informed medical decisions, join existing patient groups, or create new ones. We can provide our genetic samples to data-driven trials to learn about our likelihood to respond to particular therapies. We can even organise to self-fund future studies or join only those studies that give us the legal right to say how and where our data are used.
In other words, patients can, and should, stop being the passive 'sick' and actively engage to pressure clinicians, researchers, and drug developers to adapt or perish.
Democratised medicine represents the fullest flowering of the biomedical information revolution. There are few worthier goals than a future in which citizen-patients are active participants in managing their own health.
About the authorStephen H. Friend is president, co-founder, and director of Sage Bionetworks, a non-profit medical research organisation.
Published 08 May 2012


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The bad news keeps coming for the battered offensive line of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
CBSSports.com's Jason La Canfora reported Tuesday that starting right tackle Mike Adams is expected to miss a significant amount of time after suffering a high ankle sprain in Sunday's loss to the Cleveland Browns. At his Tuesday morning news conference, coach Mike Tomlin listed Adams as out for Week 13's game against the Baltimore Ravens.
Week 13 Waiver Wire
Michael Fabiano lists the top waiver wire targets for fantasy owners in Week 13. More ...
Pittsburgh has been forced all season to shift players around on the line. Rookie Kelvin Beachum stepped in for Adams on Sunday, who was already filling in for the injured Marcus Gilbert, who was placed on injured-reserve this week.
The Steelers do gain some flexibility after activating guard David DeCastro, their first-round pick who hasn't played yet due to a knee injury suffered in the preseason.
Another intriguing depth-chart move: Ed Bouchette of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported Tuesday that coach Mike Tomlin has listed Mike Wallace or Emmanuel Sanders across from Antonio Brown. That's a first for the Steelers, but Wallace struggled Sunday, pulling down just one catch against the Browns.
There's options at wideout, but the Steelers cannot afford another injury in the trenches.
Follow Marc Sessler on Twitter @MarcSesslerNFL.


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Massachusetts voters may have enthusiastically approved the legalization of medical marijuana, but that has not stopped communities around the state from rushing to amend their zoning regulations to make sure marijuana dispensaries are banned or restricted in their towns.
Although the law allowing the use of marijuana for patients with serious medical conditions went into effect Tuesday, the state Department of Public Health has until May 1 to issue regulations on who will run the dispensaries, who will work there, and how they will be operated.
DPH must also decide what constitutes a 60-day supply patients can receive.
Some cities and towns are working to bar dispensaries. Wakefield and Reading have already approved zoning changes to keep them out.
''People are concerned about how broad the law was written and that the dispensaries could be used by more than just people with medical issues,'' said Ruth Clay, the health director for Wakefield, Reading, and Melrose, which is also working to pass a ban on dispensaries.
The law approved through Question 3 on the November election ballot eliminates civil and criminal penalties for the use of marijuana by people with cancer, Parkinson's disease, AIDS, and other conditions determined by a doctor.
Opponents have said they are concerned that the public health officials will not be able to prevent abuses of the new law.
The Massachusetts Municipal Association is calling for a six-month delay in implementing the law.


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It was another car bomb in the Middle East, the victim this time one of those "notorious terrorists" seemingly generic to the landscape. Hezbollah's Imad Mughniyeh died February 12 in Damascus as he lived most of his forty-five years, in that world of searing blast, mutilation, mayhem, and aftershock of cold fear.
Yet behind fleeting, often hackneyed reports of his death, he was no ordinary figure in the long blood-red line of killers and killed. Given a murderer's good-riddance by Washington and Jerusalem while a martyr's memorial from Gaza and Beirut to Baghdad and Tehran, Mughniyeh was emblematic of the gulf between worlds-of atrocities and abject failure of statesmanship on all sides, in which American policy has its own half-century share.
Millions on his head, Mughniyeh led a largely unseen life. But some of its milestones can be glimpsed from the archive of the past fifty years in the Middle East. It is in part the story of a man, a country, a region pitted against the United States in a shadow war of intervention and resistance, attack and reprisal, most Americans never saw.
No outrage or theology of the oppressed can rationalize the savagery of a Mughniyeh, spiraling vengeance that leaves the non-state terrorist-or the government practicing its own version in the guise of "special operations" or covert action-no better than the evil they claim as justification, and their cause ultimately no less betrayed. But there will be no end to reciprocal brutality and defeat in the Middle East until the history Mughniyeh embodies is understood.
Born in 1963 to Shiite peasant parents in Tayr Dibba, a village in impoverished southern Lebanon, he grew up in a cinder block house with no running water in a Levant of vast inequity, where pre-World War II French colonialism and then postwar U.S. support heedlessly fastened Western control with the proxy political-economic repression by the Maronite Christian minority with its avowedly fascist Phalangist party and militia. That client tyranny, masked by Beirut's cosmopolitan façade, was perpetuated by the 1958 military intervention of US Marines and the ensuing CIA corruption of Lebanese politics through the 1970s, including millions in covert subsidies to the Phalange and numerous Lebanese politicians.
He was nine in July 1972 when near where he lived in south Beirut's Shiite slums the city's first car bomb, planted by the Israelis in retaliation for the recent Lod Airport massacre, blew up the spokesman of the group behind the Lod attack, Palestinian poet Ghassan Kanafani, along with his 17-year-old niece Lamees with him for a shopping trip.
Mughniyeh was thirteen in 1976 when the CIA and Israel covertly backed the invasion of Lebanon by Syria to thwart the emergence of a broad nationalist coalition representing the country's Islamic majority and supported by the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
He was an eighteen-year-old engineering student at the American University of Beirut in 1981 when the U.S. gave a "green light" to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in pursuit of the PLO.
He was nineteen in the summer of 1982 when the Israeli Army, with covert U.S. aid, laid siege to Beirut, raking the city with artillery, devastating Shiite neighborhoods. (Osama bin Laden would say later it was the attacks on Beirut's high-rise apartment buildings that prompted him to retaliate against New York skyscrapers.)
By 1982, like several of his boyhood soccer team, teenage Mughniyeh joined the combined PLO and Lebanese nationalist resistance to the invasion, becoming a sniper along the Green Line. He watched that September as the West negotiated the PLO's exit from Lebanon with guarantees that U.S. and other peacekeeping troops would protect Palestinian refugee camps from reprisal by hostile Lebanese factions-only to see the US Marine force swiftly withdrawn, leaving Lebanese militias to massacre helpless hundreds at the Shatila and Sabra camps as Israeli forces looked on. Even US officials, Secretary of State George Shultz and National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane, would call the episode "treacherous" and "criminal."
In April 1983, a bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut killed several CIA agents pivotal in past covert actions in Lebanon, an attack Mughniyeh was later accused of "masterminding." But there would be no real evidence of his role-only that the bombing was in retaliation for the Marine withdrawal allowing the Shatila and Sabra slaughter as well as earlier interventions.
He was twenty in September 1983 when the U.S. Sixth Fleet intervened in the Lebanese Civil War by firing on rebel forces fighting the reactionary Phalangist regime, the USS Virginia and John Rodgers pounding hills above Beirut with 24,000 pounds of ordnance, soon followed by the battleship New Jersey's small car-size 2,000-pound shells inflicting untold civilian as well as combatant casualties.
On October 23, 1983, a truck bomb with 12,000 pounds of explosives killed 241 Marines quartered at the Beirut Airport after being sent back to Lebanon. U.S. officials later accused Mughniyeh in the attack, though again there would be no evidence-only that the assault on the Marines was in retaliation for the U.S. naval shelling and other interference in Lebanon's civil war. "We still do not have the actual knowledge of who did the bombing of the Marine barracks at the Beirut Airport," Caspar Weinberger, the Secretary of Defense at the time, told PBS in 2001, "and we certainly didn't then."
A turning point came for Mughniyeh came in 1985 when he was a twenty-two-year-old bodyguard to Sheikh Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah. A fiery preacher, spiritual mentor to many in the rising political consciousness of Lebanon's Shiite community, Fadlallah took no political role, opposed violence and sectarian division, and defied growing Iranian influence in Lebanon. But on March 8, 1985-in reprisal for the Marine barracks bombing, and in an operation goaded by the Israelis and funded by the Saudis, both of whom saw Fadlallah as a threat to their own interests in Lebanon-the CIA tried to car-bomb Fadlallah. By chance the cleric escaped harm, but the huge explosion ravaged the poor Shiite area where he lived, wounding 200 and killing 80, among them Fadlallah's bodyguards and Mughniyeh's close friends. The next day, a banner hung over the smoking ruins-"Made in the USA."
With the Fadlallah bombing, Mughniyeh joined the terrorist arm of the increasingly militant political impulse among Lebanon's Shiites from which Hezbollah soon emerged, and as the resistance movement's chief of security and intelligence, he joined one of history's more vicious chain reactions.
Later in 1985 he reportedly interrogated kidnapped CIA agent William Buckley who soon died in captivity, and whose abduction set in motion the Washington sequel of trading arms for hostages that led to the Iran-Contra scandal.
In July 1985 he was involved in the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 with the brutal killing of U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem, for which Mughniyeh and others were indicted by an American court.
In 1988, he was implicated in the kidnapping and murder of Marine Colonel William Higgins serving with UN peacekeeping forces in Lebanon, a crime a U.S. official would describe as a "blood debt" driving Washington's further intervention in Lebanon and the region.
Over the 1980s, Mughniyeh conducted much of the Middle East's shadowy minuet with Washington in which dozens of Western hostages were taken and traded for American arms for the Palestinians and Iranians as well as Hezbollah-the U.S. feeding Iran weapons in its 1980s war with Iraq while supplying the Iraqis intelligence on Iran in a ruthless policy of bleeding both.
Mughniyeh evaded numerous U.S. and Israeli attempts to assassinate him, including a 1994 car bomb that killed his brother. Become mythic, in the West a faceless monster, in the Middle East a tall, handsome, well-dressed hero fluent in English and French, he was widely credited with historic feats, including the deployment of armor-piercing roadside bombs driving Israeli forces from Lebanon in 2000 and 2006, and plaguing the U.S. occupation of Iraq. "When in doubt, and we are always in doubt about this,' said an ex-CIA official, "blame Mughniyeh."
His death, predictably, was shrouded in intrigue and menace. As Hezbollah threatened revenge, there were reports that he had been planning some retaliation for the recent Israeli bombing of Syria, that the headrest explosive in his SUV was triggered by satellite as only the U.S. or Israel could have managed, that some of his Syrian hosts may have conspired with the CIA in some new cabal, or even that the killing was faked so that he could go still deeper underground. In the old ceaseless, senseless cycle, reprisals were in the offing.
About his life, as Churchill said of historical tragedy, the terrible ifs accumulate. If in a Lebanon free of any real cold war Russian threat the West had not so reflexively and so long colluded with the colonial oligarchs against a political-economic democracy bringing long-term stability. If there had been from any side an equitable peace between Palestinians and Israelis. And perhaps most decisively, if the U.S. had not continuously thrown its vast weight into the scales-furtively if not always openly-with so little knowledge and sensibility that it ended with enemies America and its Israeli client need never have made.
How history will see Mughniyeh-vicious killer, fierce patriot, or both-will depend, of course, on who writes it in the era's clashing dogmas. If only his death could teach, this figure who killed so many might yet save lives. But so long as the world's greatest power lacks the wisdom and courage to face its past culpability and change its course in the Middle East, the key to so much else in its policies at home as well as abroad, one outcome seems sure. In some cinder block hovel in south Beirut, the rubble of Gaza, or the walled-in ghettos of the West Bank, some young man, or woman, is waiting to take his place.
ROGER MORRIS, who served on the Senior Staff of the National Security Council under Presidents Johnson and Nixon before resigning over the invasion of Cambodia, is an award-winning historian and author of several bookson Nixon, Kissinger, Haig, and the Clintons. More recently, he co-authored with Sally Denton The Money and the Power, a history of Las Vegas as the paradigm of national corruption. His new book Shadows of the Eagle a history of US policy and covert action in the Middle East and South Asia, forthcoming from Knopf in 2008.
[A shorter version of this article ran in Canada's Globe and Mail February 23]


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The mess about the North Korean boat loaded in Cuba with obsolete arms for repair, hidden under some tons of sacks of sugar, suitable for the captain's suicide attempts and the crew's hunger strike, all lunatics of Kim Il Sung and his descendants, continues to monopolize international media attention. Nevertheless, for Cubans, after the concise initial report, absolute silence and secrecy are maintained trying to give the impression that nothing is happening, basing that on the fact that if it does not come out on the TV News or appear in the newspaper Granma it is because it does not exist.
It calls attention that this happens immediately after the end of the 9th Congress of the Union of Cuban Journalists (UPEC) where, among the few things of interest that were considered, some journalists requested (they did not demand) to be permitted to have access to the reports. It seems that, although the word was yes, in practice it is no, beginning with the concealment, the same days as the closing ceremony (July 14), of the composition of the baseball team, which would participate in a tournement with one agreed to by North American universities in cities of that country, from which sports reporters discovered, when this was already known in the United States (July 15), in the afternoon, in the schedule of the insufferable Roundtable TV show, and continuing, almost immediately, with the mess about the boat.
The official press and the secrecy that accompanies it seem to have no remedy: it is something inherent in the model, that cannot subsist in a climate of freedom of information, not even under the control of the party through the UPEC, its bureaucratic shell.
The boat is another thing: no one understands this political bungling, it it wasn't orchestrated for the purpose of torpedoing possible contacts, directed at the gradual normalization of relations between the governments of Cuba and the United States. As was expected, on the event of the 60th anniversary of the 26th of July assault on the Moncada Barracks, after the sausage of slimy speeches for the occasion by the invitees, absolutely nothing was said about the thorny matter. It seems that this stings and extends until August. Give it time!
*Translator's note: "Little Paper Boat" is a Cuban children's song. The words, in English, are: Little paper boat, my faithful friend / carry me away over the wide sea. / I want to meet children from here and there / and take them all my flower of friendship. / Down with war, up with peace / We children want to laugh and sing.
Translated by mlk
26 July 2013


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I am a postdoc in the Department of Computer Science at Columbia University in the city of New York. I belong to the Languages and Compilers Group headed by Prof. Alfred V. Aho and Prof. Stephen A. Edwards.
In January 2007, I will join the MIMOSA research team at INRIA Sophia Antipolis in France.


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ISS033-E-011151 (10 Oct. 2012) — The SpaceX Dragon commercial cargo craft is grappled by the International Space Station's Canadarm2 robotic arm. Working from the robotics workstation inside the seven-windowed Cupola, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Aki Hoshide, Expedition 33 flight engineer, with the assistance of NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, commander, captured Dragon at 6:56 a.m. (EDT) and used the robotic arm to berth Dragon to the Earth-facing port of the Harmony node Oct. 10, 2012. Dragon is scheduled to spend 18 days attached to the station. During that time, the crew will unload 882 pounds of crew supplies, science research and hardware from the cargo craft and reload it with 1,673 pounds of cargo for return to Earth. After Dragon's mission at the station is completed, the crew will use Canadarm2 to detach Dragon from Harmony and release it for a splashdown about six hours later in the Pacific Ocean, 250 miles off the coast of southern California. Dragon launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket at 8:35 p.m. Oct. 7 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, beginning NASA's first contracted cargo delivery flight, designated SpaceX CRS-1, to the station.
Image Credit: NASA